Quote:
Originally Posted by trace87
its not very consistent, but it has some of the best songs in their catalog(back in the ussr, dear prudence, helter skelter, i will, julia, martha my dear, piggies, while my guitar gently weeps, ob-la-di ob-la-da and i have a soft spot for rocky racoon too...).
|
Don't forget
Happiness Is A Warm Gun, probably the darkest Beatle song ever that hints heroin use by Lennon. When the album was first released, Paul McCartney said
Rocky Racoon was a humorous tribute to Bob Dylan's tranformation to more rustic song themes following his motorcycle crash. McCartney's imitation of Dylan's clipped vocal cadence at the beginning of the song (where McCartney sings:
"Somewhere in the black mining hills of Dakota etc..) always brings a smile to may face.
Both Lennon & McCartney could do deadly parodies of other musicians and prominent public figures. Lennon also had a talent for clever word play as evidenced by his book title
In My Own Write. George Martin infuriated the suits at EMI when doubled their he doubled the Beatle's song royalties from 1 penny to 2 pennies an album, during their first recording session. Martin's only explaination was that even without their musical talents, both Lennon and McCartney deserved additional points for the sheer entertainment value of their humorous observations.
With the
White Album, one should consider the fact that it's a two volume album with 28 songs and 20 of those songs are up to par with the other Beatle albums and only 5 to 8 of the songs were filler. It's my favorite album by the Beatles of the post-Sgt. Peppers era and I like for the same reason many people dislike it: It's sprawling, overly ambitious and chaotic effort that baffled the critical establishment with it's wild mood swings and dark themes. McCartney's
Rocky Racoon &
Bungalow Bill sounded like children songs but each song had macarbe undercurrent of mayhem and violence. Harrison's
Piggies and Lennon's
Helter Skelter had similar themes.
The White Album was prophetic because the free floating dread of the White Album Beatles music seemed to anticipate the rise of heroin use by the hippie counterculture, the bombings of Weather Underground, the Tate LoBianca murders and chaos at Altamont. All of those events marked 1969 as the end of the dream.
If you want a picture perfect, mellow, coffee table Beatles album then
Abbey Road should be your choice. I found
Abbey Road to be a frustrating album for that very reason.
Abbey Road was the Beatles retreat to the ivory tour of the Abbey Road 64 track studio to record breathtakingly beautiful songs that made everyone happy.
I can't really blame the Beatles for wanting to get out of the game at that point. There were thousands people like Charles Manson who thought the Beatles were there personal savior and their music contained a message to them personally, usually about some sort of imagninary future apocalyspe. Manson's personal message ended up with his final solution of Helter Skelter.
It wasn't just Manson, droves of people had personal fixations on the Beatles and their music. A friend of mine who went on to acheive minor noteriety as rock guitarist confided to me that the Beatles were a fullfilment of the prophesies of King David, in the haze of an acid trip one night. I shrugged when he whipped out a Bible read the passages out of the Book of Pslams that proved the divinity of the Beatles.. but I was a little bit worried about the guy. In a little over a decade John Lennon would be murdered by a guy that believed he was Holden Caulfield from the book
Catcher in the Rye and Mark David Chapman really believed world would be a better place without a "phony" like John Lennon. I think
Abbey Road was intended to be a chill-out album and a final farewell to that pathological class of Beatle fans. Unfortunately Chapman had the opportunity to deliver the message and was given the opportunity to do so because John Lennon trusted his fans and refused to hire body guards or use rear entry door to his home in the Dakota apartments.
The killing of John Lennon one of those traumatic events that will be forever imprinted in my memory like the Kennedy assasination, the 9/11 attack and the Kent State shootings. I woke up on the morning of Nov. 9th 1980 at 6 am to the sound of Lennon's
Love Is playing on my clock radio. As I lay in the dark under the covers with my eyes closed, I was overwhelmed by the simple beauty of the song and as the song faded out, I heard WBCN dee jay Charles Laquidaria's announcement of Lennon's death at the Dakota and I cried... the dream was over. I've never been as overwhelmed with grief at the death of a public figure as I was with John Lennon's death.
Linear Mode
